In the field of video production and distribution, the volume of information to be processed is increasing at an outstanding pace. The ever increasing popularity of videos on the Internet, allied to the recent advances in networking, are drastically changing video consumption habits. In parallel, the proliferation of electronic devices, such as smart phones, watches, tablet, desktops and laptop computers, being used to consume video content from the Internet is increasing at exponential rates.
Features and support often vary greatly from device to device, such as image ratios, maximum resolution, and supported encoders, decoders, and file types. In addition, the variations in bandwidth availability often require that the same content is provided with multiple resolutions.
Thus, content distributers are faced with the challenge of transforming and distributing media in several different formats. The Android® operating system, for example, supports H.263, H.264 AVC, H.265, MPEG-4 SP (Moving Picture Experts Group), VP8 and VP9 video formats (among others). In addition, the H.264 codec, for example, offers two versions of standard definition video resolution, as well as a high definition video resolution, each having associated frame rates, bitrates, audio codecs, audio channels and audio bitrates.
A need therefore exists for methods and apparatus for automatically transcoding media files.